20 SEO Tips for a Small Business

Here are 20 SEO tips for your small business.

1. No SEO means no visitors from search engines. If you don’t do it then search engines can’t categorise and rank your site for keywords relevant to your business.

2. Both on-site SEO and off-site SEO are required. You can’t achieve good results doing one without the other.

3. Start doing SEO now. The longer you leave it to start, the further ahead your competitors will be, and the harder it becomes to rank higher than them.

4. Know your competition. Find out what the sites ranking on the 1st page for the keywords that you want to rank for have done, on-site and off-site, to get there.

5. No two websites are the same. An SEO strategy that worked for someone else’s site isn’t guaranteed to work for yours because there are so many variables.

6. SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get big results on a small budget if you invest time in creating good content and building online relationships.

7. SEO results aren’t instant. The results of SEO work done today might not become apparent, and might not be credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.

8. The newer your website is, the more patient you will need to be. It takes time to build authority and trust, and until you’ve developed both, you shouldn’t expect to outrank older, more established sites.

9. Never consider your website to be finished. If you want your site to continue to rank higher, attract more visitors and make more sales, then you should always be adding to and improving it.

10. Adapt to algorithm updates. To attain and retain good rankings you need to adapt your SEO strategy as search engines evolve over time.

11. You don’t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.

12. Get advice directly from Google. Via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos.

13. Don’t risk Google penalties. As they have a significant share of the search market, a penalty from them results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site.

14. You’re ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the basis that you didn’t do, and didn’t know the specifics of, the SEO work on your site.

15. Set-up and use Google Webmaster Tools. To find out, among other things, what keywords your site is ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.

16. Set-up and use Google Analytics. To find out, among other things, how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit.

17. Set-up a Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for localised keywords.

18. Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.

19. Use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both, as although PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want.